Beyond landscape designation: innovative funding, delivery and governance and the UK protected area system.
Summary (3 min read)
1. Introduction
- A final section discusses some issues relating to the 'reterritorialisation' of conservation in the context of neoliberal 'institutional blending'.
- The paper concludes that within the present economic and political structures of the European Union these new landscape initiatives represent individually imaginative and in aggregate vital adjuncts to areas protected by formal designation.
2. The policy context
- Issues such as the above have contributed to a debate around the significance and nature of PAs themselves.
- The principal PA categories recognised by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources (IUCN) are shown in fig i .
- They are particularly characteristic of Europe although they constitute a minority of designated areas worldwide (Borrini-Feyerabend et al. 2013) .
Six management categories
- Four governance categories Ia Strict nature reserve: Strictly protected for natural features; restricted human visitation & use.
- Large natural or near-natural areas protecting large-scale ecological processes with characteristic species and ecosystems, also known as II National park.
- This means that partnership working and consent are keys to success.
- UK PLs are recognised as having pioneered 'people-centred' approaches to landscape protection and have been seen for some time as 'greenprints'; places where innovative approaches to rural governance and to sustainable landscape management can be pioneered and later extended to the wider countryside (MacEwen and MacEwen 1987) .
Governance by government:
- Key amongst these (amongst nations subscribing to the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD)) are Indigenous and Community Conserved Areas -defined as 'natural and modified ecosystems, including significant biodiversity, ecological services and cultural values, voluntarily conserved by indigenous and local communities through customary laws or other effective means'.
- Though generally perceived as of doubtful relevance to 'developed' nations (where in Europe at least the term 'indigenous' is problematic and has been appropriated by the political right) it would seem that the qualification 'and local' renders the application of CCA (dropping the 'I') in principle at least, potentially applicable to Europe.
- An ongoing project of the UK IUCN National Committee aims to assign one of the six IUCN protected area management categories and one of the four protected area governance types (including CCA) to all places in the UK that meet the IUCN PA criteria (NCUK 2012).
- Janssen and Knippenberg (2012) go further, challenging the traditional approach to PA designation, characterised as 'drawing lines round areas valued by experts' as outmoded.
- Instead of setting landscapes aside by 'designation', nature and landscape conservationists now look to develop linkages between strictly protected core areas and the areas around: economic links which benefit local people, and physical links, for instance via ecological corridors, to provide more space for species and natural processes.'.
3. UK landscape-scale conservation guardianship and governance
- One outcome has been the establishment of Local Nature Partnerships (LNP), each intended to consist of 'a broad range of local organisations, businesses and people who aim to help bring about improvements in their local natural environment' (Defra 2012) .
- Some 50 LNPs now cover virtually the whole of England.
- In parallel the government allocated a 'one-off' fund of c. €9.3million to assist the establishment of twelve pilot Nature Improvement Areas (NIAs, fig ii.b, selected from 76 applications) covering around 64,000ha (under 0.5% of the land surface) where partnership working would improve ecosystem quality and connectivity.
- Beyond these pilot areas, any subsequent NIAs will be locally determined and funded by LNPs.
- Whilst welcoming the White Paper's support for the Lawton recommendations and participating in the establishment of the new LNPs and NIAs, NGOs have also been critical of the government's response as unambitious and inadequately resourced.
4. The UK HLF Landscape Partnership programme
- At an early stage HLF perceived a need to introduce funding for multi-project schemes distributed over a wider geographical area.
- An 'Area Schemes' programme was launched in 1998 (when ELC was still in draft) under HLF's first (1999) (2000) (2001) (2002) (2003) (2004) ) Strategic Plan to fund: 'Integrated area-based projects of countryside or nature conservation enhancement put forward by public or not-for-profit organisations, which can involve expenditure on property in both public and private ownership.
- Such schemes will focus on one area or region and should include reference to cultural, historic, wildlife and scenic value, archaeology, buildings and public access.'.
- To mid-2014, over €190million has been invested in 91 different schemes throughout the UK, covering around 12% of the land surfacean area greater than the total of all UK NPs (fig iii).
Location of the UK HLF Landscape Partnerships and predecessor Area Schemes 1998-2014.
- With experience changes have been made in the detailed criteria and procedures for HLF LP funding.
- Match funding can include professional labour and volunteer time (costed respectively at €437 and €63 per day).
- HLF requires the LCAP to include both a strategy plan and a detailed action plan.
- The variety of projects undertaken is generally accepted to have made a significant contribution to community engagement and sustainability within protected areas (ENPAA 2012 , LUC 2009 , 2010) .
Figure iv.
- Thematic priorities and programme areas of the HLF Landscape Partnership programme under its second (SP2) and third (SP3) Strategic Plan and its current Strategic Framework (SF4).
- Overall the HLF LP programme has been a significant learning process -for individual LP partners, project leads and participants, for LP teams and for HLF itself.
- This was in part to remove the incentive for LPs to stage events (often 'importing' external cultural facilitators) in order to 'tick the box' but also to recognise the problematic and sometimes contested nature of heritageincluding the value attached to landscape -which is culturally relative, and is bound by class, gender and ethnicity (Waterton 2010) .
- Evaluation of the LP programme nationally is complicated by the large number of schemes and the diversity of their landscape and social contexts.
- The most significant feature of LPs in contrast to PLs is that funding is fixed and time limited.
Landscape scale working Partnership working
- Implementing multiple activities within an area of coherent landscape character affirms and integrates its distinctive qualities, also known as Focus.
- Inspires local and stakeholder participation and commitment, also known as Engagement.
- Facilitates mutual support -for example, in cases of difficulty other partners may be able to step in and help, or funding can be vired to / from other projects within the scheme.
- Creates dialogue between landowners, local communities, visitors and interest and user groups.
- Evaluation of intangibles and ensuring legacy represents work in progress for HLF and for individual LPs.
5. Issues and debates
- A final concern is that to the degree to which the initiatives rehearsed in this paper focus on biodiversity enhancement on privately-owned land, they are dependent (as are those within UK PLs) on the uncertain (and widely regarded as flawed) agri-environment funding available through the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) (Clark 2006a ).
- Hodge and Adams argue that this is unsustainable in the long term and argue for 'a new post-neoliberal approach that is more interventionist, implementing more formal legal agreements and land purchase to secure conservation land management against serious but uncertain threats.'.
- 1) Brockington et al (2008) go further, seeing the initiatives rehearsed in this paper only as the more acceptable face of the marketization of conservation, also known as (Hodge and Adams 2012a.
6. Conclusions
- Landscape partnershipsboth those promoted by NGOs, and those supported by HLF LP funding -demonstrate strengths and weaknesses.
- Their weaknesses (at least as compared with statutorily designated areas) include the fact that in themselves they have no long-term statutory protection, and (in the case of LPs) their achievements depend on the engagement and enthusiasm of local residents and the establishment of a partnership committed to achieving the goals set out in the LCAP.
- Moreover they are also part of an institutional restructuring of conservation in which the third sector is co-opted in the delivery of what were previously seen as functions of the state.
- But these same features are also strengths because protection of nature can never be secured solely within protected areas or by the state alone; it requires partnership working at a local and regional level, engaging local people to achieve common goals.
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References
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"Beyond landscape designation: innov..." refers background in this paper
...For example social class and ethnicity have been shown to be critical factors shaping both visitor perceptions and the management priorities in the Peak District NP resulting in the exclusion of under-represented groups (Suckall et al. 2009)....
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68 citations
"Beyond landscape designation: innov..." refers background in this paper
...(Hodge and Adams 2012a: 1) Brockington et al (2008) go further, seeing the initiatives rehearsed in this paper only as the more acceptable face of the marketization of conservation....
[...]
...The initiatives described in this paper amount to a spatial and conceptual shift - a ‘reterritorialisation’ (Adams et al. 2014, Hodge and Adams 2012a) of conservation beyond PAs....
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...Whether what Hodge and Adams (2012b) term ‘neoliberalisation’ serves to promote market forces and private ownership or to push back the market and support collectivisation remains an open question....
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...The result has been a blurring of the boundary between public and private, a process described by Hodge and Adams (2012b) as ‘institutional blending’....
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...A 2011 estimate suggests there are some 200 such initiatives in the UK, covering around 8.5mha equivalent to about one third of the total UK land area before allowing for overlap (Hodge and Adams 2012a)....
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65 citations
"Beyond landscape designation: innov..." refers background in this paper
...The initiatives described in this paper amount to a spatial and conceptual shift - a ‘reterritorialisation’ (Adams et al. 2014, Hodge and Adams 2012a) of conservation beyond PAs....
[...]